Id.Y-11 Heavy Tank

Produced by Indarista-Yaril, the Id.Y-11 Heavy tank, often called the Intimidator or the Irradiator, is one of the most feared vehicles on a battlefield

Full Item Description
The Id.Y-11 Heavy Tank is from a design standpoint a very conventional design. The engine and crew are housed in a solid box like main hull that sports surprisingly thick armor, the front glacis have a sloped contour. The turret houses the main cannon, a 130mm low velocity smooth-bore gun, as well as a pair of remote controlled machine guns. One gun is mounted co-axially with the cannon, the other sits atop the turret and can be fired manually.

The power for the tank comes from a compact fission reactor located in the rear of the vehicle. This creates a large amount of waste heat and radiation, so most crews have enviromental suits and respirators. This doesnt do much for the toxic emissions that are vented out of the tank, so most other infantry units will do their best to avoid the tank, friendly or otherwise. The fissionable engine gives the Id.Y-11 two considerable drawbacks, it is very heavy, and it’s heat signature makes it an easy target for heat seeking weaponry. The tank does have almost unlimited range due to it’s robust electric drive motors, an impressive cruise speed for it’s weight, and is surprisingly mechanically reliable.

The main cannon, noted for being medium ranged at best and not very accurate, fires a special high explosive round. Essentially a mini-nuke, each shell is a pocket atom bomb. The low velocity of the gun is required to keep the internal mechanisms of the shell from collapsing under acceleration in the barrel. Since the explosion from the shell, usually in the range of .1 to .15 kilotons is more than enough to destroy most any single building or enemy vehicle, accuracy and range werent considered very important.

History
The Id.Y-11 Heavy Tank entered into a battlefield that was dominated largely by mecha, platoons of powered armor infantry, and other high tech weaponry. In this battlefield, the tank had become a lowly auxilliary unit. The designers at Indirista-Yaril saw a potential way to bring what was considered an obsolete mode of warfare back into relevance. The tank had advantages that had long been overlooked in the tech arms races. The design is easy to construct, easy to maintain, and a tank can carry drastically more armor than a mecha of similar weight. The tank can also mount large weapons that are often more cumbersome than mecha pilots would care to carry.

The Id.Y-11 Heavy Tank is a mixture of highly dangerous components, equally intimitation and devastating effect. Most mecha are seriously damaged even by a near miss of the atomic cannon, and infantry units suffer hideous losses, sometimes years after facing a Id.Y-11. Survivors generally agree that the lucky soldiers were the ones who died quickly from flash burns, shrapnel, and other blast debris. The unlucky ones were those who lingered with debilitating cancers. One survivor was unluckly enough to bring home a radioactive fragment of shell casing in his torso. He died soon after, but not before the peice of radioactive shrapnel gave three of his family members cancer as well.

Most tank crews who operate this monster avoid this sort of exposure, mostly due to a mix of protective gear and anti-radiation drugs.

Deploymeny
The Id.Y-11 Heavy Tank is almost never used by what are deemed First Rank powers. These militaries rely on superheavy tanks and mecha and power armor almost exclusively. Instead, the Id.Y-11 is deployed by secondary and tertiary powers who dont have the resources to maintain large mecha armies or similar weaponry. Most enemy forces will attempt negotiation rather than face the Id.Y-11 on the field of battle. The tank itself is only moderately formidable, but it’s deployment is considered a form of Scorched Earth warfare. Even destroying a Y-11 causes it’s reactor to vent toxic substances around the vehicle, or in the right conditions, to go critial for an even larger dirty explosion.

The manufacturer, Indarista-Yaril has produced several thousand of these tanks and has a small but steady demand for them. The most common use for these is to defend worlds that are deemed unihabitable, but valuable. These worlds tend to be lacking enviroment, or are hostile enough to life that there is no measurable biosphere. The manufacturer has faced multiple charges from stellar powers, but the company has yet to be shut down, or suffered a raid serious enough to bring production to a halt. As can be expected, the primary factory is protected by a battalion of Id.Y-11s outfitted with the latest in electronics and armor.

Additional Ideas (0)

Gain the ability to:Vote and add your ideas to submissions.
Upvote and give XP to useful comments.
Work on submissions in private or flag them for assistance.
Earn XP and gain levels that give you more site abilities.
Join a Guild in the forums or complete a Quest and level-up your experience.

This is quite ...interesting. It has a good premise, and I really like it, but I have to ask, before I can vote: Is there a reason, authorial or engineering, why it has baby's first fission pile for a power plant? Given that Toshiba is already testing a nuclear reactor suitable for home use, and that newer nukes tend to be cheaper and more powerful by the same features that make them safer, I can't really see backslide to Chernobyl era systems unless there's a good reason for it.

On the other hand, this mirror image to Metal Gear makes me giggle with school girlish glee.

This tank was inspired by the Focus Tank from the Command and Conquer Red Alert 2 mod Mental Omega. It is a nuclear tank that leaves a radiation patch if it gets blown up. As for the backslide, I am thinking that it is cheap and easy to produce, and as manfred mentions, you'd rather just not blow these things up.

Well enough, I guess. I would have suggested a more reasonably contained system, with perhaps the occasional leak, with a cantankerous cooling system. That way, when you punch a hole in the armor, you have a nice little meltdown, probably with more people close by.

Me, I remembered playing Dune II ages ago, where the biggest tank of the evil Harkonnens could take a lot of punishment, and its explosion was able to take quite a few units with it. Oh yeah.

Maybe the reason for not using nuclear reactors are precisely the tank's weaknesses - the bulkiness of the reactor (needs strong plating that will last under fire), the thermal signature, the risk underwent by the crew and the possibility of leaks to downright meltdowns. Most of the time, you want to blow your nukes in very specific places if at all, not all over the place you want to capture. And this vehicle plays exactly upon that.

Well, it doesn't seem 'special' to me neither. What is of interest though, is the tactical and strategic thinking behind it (and yeah, maybe it was just started on that nuclear angle, but that is no bad). There is this whole set of preconceptions on how things ought to be, then there is something which does it exactly the wrong way and is successful because of that. I like those turn-arounds.

What this gives is a very different option for its setting, and that is useful.

Main battle tanks are hard to write up and make interesting. But I think this a very good entry in the department.

First in RPG-war games this tank would bring a collective grown to any PC unit (which is good). Its terrible death and the area damage that death causes on the battle field will limit the type of weapons you can bring against it, its massive armor would make it hard to bring down and its inaccurate and destructive weapon would annoy the hell out of most players.

In a more traditional sci-fi game (star wars, traveller, star trek) this would really set the tone of a fatalistic military conflict and a dangerous frontier world. This could be a fun set piece or an interesting item to make your PC drive it.

In a dark comedy game such as paranoia, this tank would be a must, and it might throw the PCs even more if the tank didn't have an AI brain and a caustic personality...but rather the PC just have a big manually controlled tank/bomb.